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Back Railroad of Death
Chapters (40)
  1. FOREWORD
  2. RAILROAD OF DEATH
  3. REFERENCE LIST:
  4. Railroad of Death
  5. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (1948)
  6. INTRODUCTION
  7. PART ONE: SINGAPORE
  8. CHAPTER 1
  9. CHAPTER 2
  10. CHAPTER 3
  11. CHAPTER 4
  12. CHAPTER 5
  13. PART TWO: RAILROAD OF DEATH
  14. CHAPTER 6
  15. CHAPTER 7
  16. CHAPTER 8
  17. CHAPTER 9
  18. CHAPTER 10
  19. CHAPTER 11
  20. CHAPTER 12
  21. CHAPTER 13
  22. PART THREE: BASE CAMPS AND LIBERATION
  23. CHAPTER 14
  24. CHAPTER 15
  25. CHAPTER 16
  26. CHAPTER 17
  27. CHAPTER 18
  28. CHAPTER 19
  29. CHAPTER 20
  30. APPENDIX ONE:
  31. APPENDIX TWO:
  32. APPENDIX THREE:
  33. APPENDIX FOUR:
  34. APPENDIX FIVE:
  35. APPENDIX SIX:
  36. APPENDIX SEVEN:
  37. APPENDIX EIGHT:
  38. APPENDIX NINE:
  39. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  40. And The Dawn Came Up Like Thunder
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CHAPTER 6

OUR truck stopped outside Changi Goal to draw the first month’s pay for officers. A lieutenant received 85 dollars a month, a Japanese ‘dollar’ being equated to the yen at about 1/2d.; but we didn’t, of course, see the 85 dollars. Forty-two dollars a month was deducted for accommodation and rations, which were exactly the same that the troops got for nothing; thirty dollars was paid to us in cash, and the balance was banked with the Yokohama Specie Bank in a mythical account there opened for us. Of the 30 dollars we actually drew, at least ten dollars went very necessarily to help the sick, and another five dollars to the Messing, so that we had the equivalent of one pound a month to spend. We drew our money without incident, returned the waves of the civilian internees’ fluttering handkerchiefs high up among the gaol windows, climbed again on our trucks and drove straight to Singapore station.

To our surprise we had only to wait two or three hours before the train came in, a long line of closed, iron trucks. Before we boarded them a Japanese major made us a speech. He talked of the dangers of war, the necessity for discipline and sacrifice, and wished us good luck on our journey and enterprise. We then packed thirty-one people into each cattle truck and with all their kit, which meant we could just sit down, but not possibly lie down. Two officers climbed into the front seat of a lorry going up on an open truck, but after a few miles they were black with smuts and came inside again. In charge of this train carrying 800 officers and men was a solitary Nip sergeant and a guard of about six. After much screaming and excitement the whistle blew, the train jerked forward, and we were off.

As far as we could gather from the labels on the trucks, our place of destination in Thailand was Bampong, alleged to be somewhere inland and west of Bangkok. It was a journey of about 1,200 miles, and we were due to arrive in about five days. Concerning the journey itself the least said, perhaps, the better. The trucks by day got nearly red hot, and we were baked in an oven; when it rained the heavy iron doors only partly shut and the truck was awash in a couple of minutes; and by night, sitting cramped up in our kit, sleep was quite impossible due to the discomfort of such overcrowding, and because a cool wind whistled through the trucks from the open doors. It was a shocking trip, and we sighed wistfully for the cool, air-conditioned compartments of the pre-war Malayan railways.